In Depth

Welcome to In Depth, a podcast from The First Round Review that’s dedicated to surfacing the tactical advice founders and startup leaders need to grow their teams, their companies and themselves. Hosted by Brett Berson, a partner at First Round, In Depth will cover a lot of ground and a wide range of topics, from hiring executives and becoming a better manager, to the importance of storytelling inside of your organization. But every interview will hit the level of tactical depth where the very best advice is found. We hope you’ll join us. Subscribe to “In Depth” now and learn more at firstround.com

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Every guest on In Depth

180 guests, ranked by how many people never want them back.

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Melissa Tan
How to design a high-impact growth org for a PLG startup — Webflow & Dropbox’s Melissa Tan · Jun 2023

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Molly Graham
Molly Graham’s management lessons from Google, Facebook, Quip & Lambda School · Oct 2020

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Oliver Jay
The new PLG playbook | Arming the next generation of product-led companies | Oliver Jay (Asana, Dropbox) · Jan 2024

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Qasar Younis
Inside the ex-YC partner’s $15B self driving car company | Qasar Younis · Aug 2025

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Ravi Mehta
The Product Strategy Playbook that Powered Growth at Tinder & TripAdvisor — Ravi Mehta · Jan 2022

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Sam Schillace
Developing technical taste: A guide for next-gen engineers | Sam Schillace (Deputy CTO at Microsoft, creator of Google Docs) · Jun 2024

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Sam Taylor
“Everyone wants a silver bullet” — Selling lessons from Sam Taylor, of Dropbox, Quip & now Loom · Jul 2021

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Steve Blank
How to find customers in the Dept of Defense: From prototype to the Pentagon | Steve Blank (Hacking for Defense) · 2 episodes

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Stevie Case
Why 90% of CROs will fall behind in the next 2 years | Stevie Case (CRO, Vanta) · Feb 2026

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Tara Seshan
Lessons from Stripe on adding new products - Assessing ideas, structuring teams, and tactics for product reviews | Tara Seshan (Watershed, Stripe) · Jun 2023

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Tristan Handy
Building a 4 billion dollar data platform: Inside dbt Labs’ unconventional path | Tristan Handy (Co-founder and CEO, ex-RJMetrics, Squarespace) · Dec 2024

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Wade Foster
Building Zapier from first principles | Contrarian takes on growth, hiring, fundraising | Wade Foster (Co-founder & CEO) · Oct 2023

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Waseem Daher
A look at one repeat founder’s frameworks for validating ideas — Pilot’s Waseem Daher · Jun 2021

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Wes Kao
How Wes Kao coaches founders to influence, lead, and get what they want | Wes Kao (Executive coach, co-founder of Maven) · May 2025

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Will Larson
A masterclass in engineering leadership from Carta, Stripe, Uber, and Calm | Will Larson (CTO at Carta) · Nov 2023

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Yuhki Yamashita
How Figma taps into taste, simplicity, and storytelling | Yuhki Yamashita (CPO at Figma, ex-Uber, Google, Microsoft) · Dec 2024

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Zack Kanter
How to build a company you’ll run forever | Zack Kanter (Founder and CEO of Stedi) · Nov 2025

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Christopher Payne
Scaling DoorDash to market dominance | Christopher Payne (Former COO, DoorDash) · Apr 2026

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Jonah Berger
How to lower barriers to change when building and selling products — Jonah Berger’s advice for founders · Dec 2022

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Keller Rinaudo Cliffton
Building Zipline: From launch disaster to drone-delivery giant | Keller Cliffton (Co-founder, CEO) · Mar 2026

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Michael Chime
From dorm room to life-saving AI | Prepared’s story | Michael Chime (Co-founder & CEO of Prepared) · Oct 2025

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Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins
Building & selling a product into government is tricky — Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins shares critical advice for getting it right · Apr 2022

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Sandra Oh Lin
Creating physical products and getting feedback from toddlers — KiwiCo’s Sandra Oh Lin · Sep 2021

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Elliot Shmukler
After leading product & growth teams at Instacart, Wealthfront & LinkedIn, Elliot Shmukler is tackling zero to one as founder & CEO of Anomalo · Apr 2021

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Jack Krawczyk
The Bard blueprint | Creating value, shipping fast, and advancing AI ethically | Jack Krawczyk (Google) · Nov 2023

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Ankur Goyal
What Braintrust got right about product-market fit | Ankur Goyal (Founder and CEO) · Jul 2025

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Bill Magnuson
Inside Braze’s blitz to $500M in CARR | Building broad, going global, and outfoxing the competition | Bill Magnuson (Co-founder & CEO) and Kevin Wang (CPO) · Feb 2025

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Jay Kreps
What nobody tells engineers about becoming a CEO | Jay Kreps (Co-founder and CEO, Confluent) · Mar 2026

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Anastasis Germanidis
How goal-setting and planning is different for AI products | Anastasis Germanidis (Co-Founder & CTO at Runway) · Nov 2023

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Jon Noronha
How Gamma pulled off their AI pivot | Jon Noronha (Co-founder and CPO of Gamma) · Jul 2026

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Manu Sharma
How to scale your co-founder relationship alongside your startup — Manu Sharma & Brian Rieger of Labelbox · Sep 2022

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Adit Abraham
How a weekend hack became a multimillion-dollar AI startup | Adit Abraham (Co-founder & CEO at Reducto) · Apr 2025

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Jake Stauch
Go hard early: How lessons from Verkada shaped Serval's AI agents for IT teams | Jake Stauch (Founder and CEO) · Oct 2025

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Parag Agrawal
Twitter's former CEO on rebuilding the web for AI | Parag Agrawal (Co-founder and CEO of Parallel) · Aug 2025

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Abhinav Asthana
From Chrome extension to $5B platform | Postman’s journey | Abhinav Asthana (Co-founder & CEO) · Aug 2025

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Anne Raimondi
From exec roles to board seats — Anne Raimondi’s leadership lessons for the startup C-Suite · Feb 2021

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Archana Agrawal
From developer to CMO — Archana Agrawal’s marketing lessons from Airtable & Atlassian · Sep 2021

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Colin Zima
How to leverage intuition, customer support, and raw effort | Colin Zima (Omni & Looker) · Oct 2023

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David Cancel
Start with the story — Drift’s David Cancel on lessons he’s learned as a 5X founder · Dec 2020

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Douglas Hanna
The go-to-market guide for open-source companies — Douglas Hanna, COO Grafana Labs · May 2023

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Recent episodes

185 episodes from the feed, newest first.

The fastest way to learn is to run two competing bets | Jay Parikh (EVP CoreAI, Microsoft)
with Jay Parikh

Aug 2026
What startups get wrong about enterprise | Lindsey Scrase (COO, Checkr)
with Lindsey Scrase

Jul 2026
How Gamma pulled off their AI pivot | Jon Noronha (Co-founder and CPO of Gamma)
with Jon Noronha

Jul 2026
Why Plaid’s COO cold-calls new hires | Eric Sager (COO of Plaid)
with Eric Sager

Jul 2026
How Supabase became the essential infrastructure for the AI era | Paul Copplestone (Co-founder, CEO)
with Paul Copplestone

Jun 2026
How to build a beloved tech brand | Sheila Joglekar Vashee (CMO, Figma)
with Sheila Joglekar Vashee

Jun 2026
Why old-school sales work still wins in the AI era | Graham Moreno (Head of GTM, Parallel)
with Graham Moreno

May 2026
Why founders should bet on first-time executives | Praveer Melwani (CFO, Figma)
with Praveer Melwani

May 2026
Why great product leaders should stop obsessing over the roadmap | Diya Jolly (CPO & CTO of Xero)
with Diya Jolly

Apr 2026
Inside Artemis' "AI vs AI" war | Shachar Hirshberg & Dan Shiebler (Co-founders, Artemis)
with Shachar Hirshberg

Apr 2026
Scaling DoorDash to market dominance | Christopher Payne (Former COO, DoorDash)
with Christopher Payne

Apr 2026
The most politically dangerous role in the C-suite | Katie Burke (COO, Harvey)
with Katie Burke

Apr 2026
What nobody tells engineers about becoming a CEO | Jay Kreps (Co-founder and CEO, Confluent)
with Jay Kreps

Mar 2026
The product wisdom every CPO should ignore | Jeremy Epling (CPO, Vanta)
with Jeremy Epling

Mar 2026
Building Zipline: From launch disaster to drone-delivery giant | Keller Cliffton (Co-founder, CEO)
with Keller Rinaudo Cliffton

Mar 2026
Snowflake’s first sales hire on scaling from $0 to $3.5B | Chris Degnan (Former CRO, Snowflake)
with Chris Degnan

Feb 2026
Why 90% of CROs will fall behind in the next 2 years | Stevie Case (CRO, Vanta)
with Stevie Case

Feb 2026
Figma is not the source of truth | Ryan Lucas (VP of Design, Rippling)
with Ryan Lucas

Feb 2026
Executive Function: Building systems that can make decisions without you | Jeanne DeWitt Grosser (COO, Vercel)
with Jeanne DeWitt Grosser

Feb 2026
Building Meter for decades, not an exit | Anil Varanasi (Co-founder and CEO)
with Anil Varanasi

Dec 2025
How Harness runs 16 “startups within a startup” at scale | Jyoti Bansal (Co-founder and CEO)
with Jyoti Bansal

Nov 2025
How to build a company you’ll run forever | Zack Kanter (Founder and CEO of Stedi)
with Zack Kanter

Nov 2025
Go hard early: How lessons from Verkada shaped Serval's AI agents for IT teams | Jake Stauch (Founder and CEO)
with Jake Stauch

Oct 2025
The pivot that paid off: How fal found explosive growth in generative media | Gorkem Yurtseven (Co-founder and CTO)
with Gorkem Yurtseven

Oct 2025
From dorm room to life-saving AI | Prepared’s story | Michael Chime (Co-founder & CEO of Prepared)
with Michael Chime

Oct 2025